Trump Will Have To Break The Law To Pass His Budget

The first is for the $54 billion to be appropriated using the Overseas Contingency Operations fund, which allows security spending over the cap if it’s for war activities in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It’s not at all clear, however, that any of the $54 billion would be for OCO-related activities. While that hasn’t stopped non-OCO-related spending from being appropriated that way in the past, doing it again would still be a violation of at least the spirit of the law.

In addition, while he was a member of Congress (that is, until 3 weeks ago), OMB Director Mulvaney adamantly opposed using OCO for non-OCO spending and could be against it now as well.

The second option is for Trump and Co. to leave the security cap as is, get Congress to agree to his $54 billion increase (possibly with the Senate eliminating a filibuster), trigger a sequester in that category and then order OMB not to implement it as the law requires.

Yes, that would mean that Mulvaney would be violating the Budget Control Act, but it’s not clear that anyone would have standing to sue to force its implementation.

And it's very unlikely that breaking this law would result in anyone being impeached.